Chapter 57: There Are Always Obstacles

(Previously)

"Good job with the attack, but where'd you get the wood?" Tokage asked as Midoriya held onto the war hammer he had just used.

To answer the question, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag; inside was a small collection of identical seeds. "I make it a habit not to go places without at least a few, and unlike the sees I was forced to use at the Sports Festival, these are ideal for my abilities." Midoriya pocketed his seeds before losing them, as he could have used something from the garden, but he didn't trust them as much as the fauna grown at home.

Kendo noticed that Todoroki was about to do something and had an idea. “Hold it, Todoroki. Before you restrain them, search them.”

"For what?" he asked. Yes, both were knocked out, but that wouldn't keep them down for long.

"Weapons, tools, communications devices, anything that can be useful," Kendo told them, and they seemed to have been informed about that, enough to know that they weren't too old. With Mineta having opened that door not too long ago, they didn't have time for someone from the top or bottom to have been told and rushed up here.

“Got it.” Todoroki started searching for just that.

Line Break

“Since they know we’re here, should we go loud?” Kaminari asked, figuring that whoever sent those guys would want an update, and when they didn't get it…

Tokage shook her head. “That’ll attract attention and they’ll send more than these two next time.”

“We can use that vent to get up, but we’ll need to climb up there first.” Yaoyorozu pointed out up to the ceiling where there happened to be a hatch. "If someone can climb the outside wall, they can enter the maintenance room."

"But who's small enough to fit inside and scale the wall without falling?" Uraraka asked before eyes went towards two candidates, Tokage, who could just split off into pieces and float, and Mineta, whose regular small size would be ideal along with his quirk.

“I can’t fit my entire body in there, but I can send just my top half," Tokage noted.

"Smart idea," Iida agreed as Todoroki returned from the two unconscious villains. In his hands, he held two earpieces.

Yaoyorozu made a small explosive for Tokage and some sanitizer for Todoroki to clean off the earpieces. With the tiny bomb in hand, Tokage smirked at them, splitting from her lower half, and floating towards the vent. "Wish me luck. Keep care of your legs around Mineta."

“Hey, what sort of degenerate do you take me for?” Mineta yelled at her but got no response other than sniggering as the girl made her up, attached the bomb, and moved away. Todoroki had just finished cleaning the air pieces when they heard the explosion with Tokage entering the now open access point. Getting outside, Tokage stuck to the building. Something like a camera spots half a girl's torso floating around.

Finding her way back in was easy enough, and this time, she didn't need an explosive to get into the maintenance room and drop the ladder for the rest to follow.

“Hey there, you guys need a way through?” Tokage smirked as the group made their way up, Midoriya being the first as he gave her a high-five, followed by Kendo and Jiro.

Mellissa was the last one up, and she was incredibly impressed with how they managed to handle two villains with ease and get past their attempts to cage them at the lower levels. “Amazing, as expected from a U.A. student.” She complimented as Tokage faux bowed.

“One with top marks in her class, mind you.” Tokage bragged as Midoriya rolled his eyes but smiled all the same.

"The night's still young; there'll be chances for me to best you, " he reminded her.

“Well, what are we waiting for, people? We've got a tower to climb and people to save!" Tokage rallied them.

“Yeah!”

Line Break

“Hey, 80th floor, have you found those kids yet?” As the group ran, their newly acquired earpieces went off. Midoriya and Kendo, who were both wearing them, stilled but didn't dare respond. “Hey, you idiots taking a nap? What's the situation down there?” They signaled to the rest that the villains were speaking but to act natural.

“Of course, they decide to go silent, bring up the cameras down there.” On the other hand, the villain ordered someone else; Kendo and Mellissa weren't fluent in English in the way Mellissa was, but they could understand enough to pick up that whoever was, on the other hand, was on a much higher floor, probably the security room.

“What the hell? How did…?” Kendo guessed that someone used the cameras to search the plant factory and found the two villains. They thought they were speaking without cold and restrained in ice. There was an annoyed grunt, but the person adapted quickly. “Never mind, just find those kids.”

“I'm working on it, but they didn't take the elevator, so I need to search floor by floor.” Someone else spoke up. The group eyed the cameras as they went, cameras they had been avoiding, if not smashing before they were even seen, but there were just too many to get them all.

“Didn’t we seal up the doors up to 82nd? Start from the 83rd.” The first noted, with Mineta wanting to yell about those stupid things which slowed them down, especially as only Kendo seemed to have the power needed to smash through them.

“Already on it,” came the response, with Jiro being the first to notice the next camera as they ran. She destroyed it, but it was active at the time. “Got them, they’re moving through the 87th, they’re moving quickly.” Midoriya ticked his teeth, but it went unnoticed by the villains.

“Just who the heck are they?” the first voice asked, as now they didn't even bother wrecking the cameras; it only slowed them down.

“I'll check their IDs. If they came to the island legally, then I should be able to…” Kaminari muttered, "Of course, the island would be able to identify them that fast. He had even updated his password photo for the trip! “Of course, they had been!”

“What? Who are they?” The first asked.

“Boss, those kids we found got past our guys on the 80th floor and knocked them out. Also, they didn't just get lucky; all but 2 of them are hero students from U.A.” Kyūfune and Mellissa shared a glance, as they had to be the outliers, and if they already knew who Mellissa was, then they could-

“U.A., oh yeah, All Might became a teacher there around April, didn't he?” A new voice came into the line, one that gave off effortless authority, making it clear as day who it had to be. “If they're climbing the tower, they're probably trying to reach you and retake the security system.” It was not a hard guess, but it would still make things difficult for them now that the villains knew they were capable and their plans.

“Where are they now?” The boss asked.

“They should be approaching the 89th floor.” The second voice replied, Uraraka looking toward a sign and seeing that it did, in fact, read '89th floor up ahead.' Kendo wondered if they couldn't try and ditch things if they tried another route, but what?

“Deploy the security drones from floors 90 to 95 but raise any barriers from the 100th floor to 130.” Iida and Todoroki frowned at the response, which was a strange order.

It seemed they weren't the only ones who thought the second villain was just as confused. “What?”

“Just do what I say.” The boss called out.

Line Break

As they had expected, when they came up to the 90th floor, which had more hallways, they spotted an intersection they'd need to cross. It was filled with what looked to be teardrop-shaped robots; they moved around on three legs with thick red armor. “What are those things?” Uraraka asked as Jiro plugged her earphone jack into the wall.

"They're the security drones. Be careful. They're incredibly strong and won't go down easily." Mellissa warned though she couldn't tell them much else as she didn't know such details.

“Well, they already knew we’re hero students, so that number feels like a good bet to slow us down," Tokage mused as she counted at least three dozen of them just lazily patrolling and a couple of cameras watching the space.

“They aren’t just trying to block us in anymore; they're trying to capture us." Iida frowned.

"Whatever the case, we don't have time to waste. We'll just have to fight our way through," Midoriya noted. Jiro Mineta turned to Midoriya, confused about why he was worried about the number of drones.

"Hold on, couldn't you do that disappearing act again?" He asked, which got the rest to look towards him and Kyūfune, no doubt recalling their stunt from earlier, which saved them a fight.

“That’s not how it works,” Midoriya retorted, keeping his eye on the obstacles as he tried to plan the best way past with the least time spent doing it. "We can make myself invisible to living things, but I'm still there in space. It's like your classmate, Hagakure, who can turn invisible."

Tokage chewed on that before recalling their finals. "So those robots would still see you? Well, that explains why Ectoplasm managed to keep track of you. His real body was probably watching your battle over a camera feed."

“If we can't rely on stealth to get through, then we'll use other means," Kendo replied. She wondered why Midoriya never used that disappearing trick during their bout, but asking him could come later.

“You’re right. Mellissa, we need to keep heading straight, right?” Midoriya asked Mellissa, the older girl, to confirm as much. “Then Todoroki, you know what to do.” Todoroki nodded as Iida grabbed him and got ready to throw him.

“Ready?” Iida asked.

“I am.” With that, Iida used his engines to spin around like a human top before throwing Todoroki directly at the robots. They saw him coming, but when he touched the ground, he sent a blast of ice to his right, freezing many of the robots solid while blocking off the right path. The same hit the left side a moment later, and Todoroki shifted his right foot in that direction. That opening move managed to handle around half the opponents they had to deal with.

Todoroki let out a frosty breath, Mellissa being stunned at his power despite this not being the first time she had seen it. “Even if they have blow-torches, it’ll take them time to get out of that," Todoroki responded as Midoriya and Kendo assisted him with the central forces. The robots, lacking fear, charged them, but between Todoroki's ice freezing them in place, Kendo's raw strength sent them flying. Midoriya's reflexes and brutal swipes and strikes with his wooden bokken they were being thrown around.

Still, unlike their U.A. counterparts, which would be scrap by now, they just got back up, dented, covered in frost and minor burns, but ready for more. One seemed to get behind Midoriya, the rest distracted by their fights. Firing its capture line, Midoriya's hand grabbed it, letting the cord wrap around it and his forearm as he gave the machine a cat-like grin.

“Nice try, but thanks for the flail.” Not wasting a second, he pulled it towards him, not to strike but to use it as a weapon against the rest, swinging it over his head before sending it flying towards its robotic compatriots like a wrecking ball. Its frame proved to be much harder than his wood, as when it hit one, he sent the target flying, a leg severed from damage.

Pulling it back in, he spun his make-shit weapon around with skill that spoke of practice, which he did have. He had trained with weapons, including meteor hammers, but he had never used one this big before.

Watching the three of them go at it, Uraraka and the rest felt slightly intimidated by how much they seemed to enjoy tearing through the island's security or the ease of doing so. “They ain’ holding back, are they?” Kaminari asked, the others nodding. It seemed like they had dented half of them so far, with Midoriya sending the now broken drone into another, which Todoroki quickly buried in a thick layer of ice.

At least, it seemed like they were half done. Still, the ice wall covering the left corridor exploded as drones poured out, the forward ones seemingly to have used a compact flame thrower to melt their way in. "Looks like they're persistent," Kendo remarked, as the right wall soon followed, leading to Iida joining in the fray, sending one of the newly arrived machines back the way it came with a well-placed kick.

Yaoyorozu saw that they wouldn't be able to break them fast enough, especially as more could be on their way, so she pulled her dress down a little, sparkles forming off her bust as she created something to give them an advantage. “We can jam their communications with these.” She called out to the others, with Mellissa and Uraraka grabbing the grenades without question and tossing them into the crowd of machines.

When they exploded, it wasn't flames, shrapnel, or smoke but a sort of metallic dust that clung to their metallic bodies and got into the thin spaces between their joints and armor. Seconds later, their communication grew disrupted and garbled, the robots losing most of their cohesion, acting like confused drunks, which helped the rest handle them.

Many drove into Mineta’s balls as he threw them all over the place, including into Todoroki's ice, which some tried to jump onto, tripping them up.

“Don’t matter how tough you are if you can’t move!” Mineta yelled at them as if this was his chance. These bots were too smart to normally run over his balls, and he would have probably just jumped over them, but when they were rendered blind and dumb, it was too easy.

All this helped reduce the number of drones they had to worry about, with Kendo punching one so hard with her enlarged fist that he flew like a bullet into several more. Steel crashing against steel as its horribly bent body slammed into the wall, leaving a sizable dent, while many of those hit were slow to get up due to damage.

Midoriya whistled in amazement at that last attack. “You’re hitting harder than usual. Are these things better opponents than I was?" he asked, hefting his new hammer on his shoulder. Though its head wasn't wood but a captured drone body restrained in place, its head and legs swung about trying to find a means to escape being used to destroy the rest.

Kendo smiled back, clenching the fist covered in the full gauntlet. “Not even, but I’m trying out a new support item.”

"Then we should thank the villains when we get to them. They've gone and given us a great selection of targets!" Midoriya spun around and, using that centrifugal force, sent his weapon right into a drone, sending it crashing into the remnants of Todoroki's left ice wall. The unit got stuck in the ice as it let out what had to be a pained beep.

“Jiro, do we have movement through the ice?” Yaoyorozu asked as Jiro kept on listening.

“At least 20 more coming from the right.” She replied as Midoriya looked around, seeing that Todoroki was already heading to reseal their left flank.

"I got this, Mineta; cover the right area with your balls; I'll put up a barrier that'll trick them into jumping into it," Midoriya called out; Mineta being on board with it as Midoriya dropped his weapon and pulled out another seed, sending tenet through it, he placed it in the middle of the role that the first bunch of drones had made, where it rapidly grew till it was near 2m high barrier wall to wall.

It wasn't the thickest, but it didn't need to be, as Mineta threw a few dozen balls behind it. Now, it didn't matter if they smashed through or jumped; they wouldn't be getting anywhere in a hurry.

Line Break

“Boss, something is interfering with the drones. We've lost those kids.” Wolfram listened to the latest report.

"Lost the chatter. One of them could have a quirk letting them spy on us." He immediately ordered as these brats were moving far too well just to be a chance. Still, at the rate things were going, they would need to worry that they would actually recover the security—that was if they didn't get a little gift just in case.

"Well, this is turning into quite a fun night. It looks like we'll get to use all our options after all." Wolfram smirked as he pulled out a small phone from his pocket. It didn't call anyone, at least not a human, but it already had a special message loaded on it.

‘Options? What does he mean by that?’ Wolfram's musing didn't go unnoticed as All Might heard it and saw the smile the man was sporting. One that didn't bode well for his students as he had seen such looks on villains before. ‘Young Kendo, you need to hurry with this. A cornered villain is the most dangerous.’

Line Break

In one of the stairwells, Jiro leaned against the wall, her earphone jack plugged into it scout ahead. "I'm hearing many of those machines on the floor above."

“Any from below?” Kendo, a little dirty from all their fighting until now, asked.

“Not as much.” Jiro shook her head, but that still didn't give them good news as they had to flee from the last group when what started out as a dozen turned into 3 dozen, then 5. Not even Mellissa knew how many drones the tower had. Still, it seemed that for each, they broke, sent into a wall, or otherwise immobilized, and another 6 replaced it.

"They're wising up; they've already stopped using their radios." Midoriya tapped his earpiece, which had been silent for a while now, though he kept it on just in case one of the villains slipped up and said something through it.

“We don’t have time to keep fighting through the army of drones they could send after us, and they already control means to further slow us down through the gates.” Todoroki huffed, as while he could heat and cool himself respectively, it wasn’t as if he could fight indefinitely.

The rest were similar: Yaoyorozu would run out of lipids, Kaminari would hit his limit, and Mineta would have already spent half his balls. He wasn't sure about Midoriya or Tokage, but he doubted they could both last in these conditions.

"Well, we can't avoid the cameras. They were designed and placed to have no blind spots. They have a rough idea of where we are, but as soon as we're spotted, they'll zero in on us." Mellissa frowned as she realized her patience with the tower was being tested, despite the irony that its very security was meant to make it as secure as it was marketed.

“What if we avoided them?” Kendo asked, and the group looked at her in confusion.

“What? How?” Tokage asked, to which Kendo gestured towards her, a spark of inspiration having it.

"They didn't seem to notice Tokage when she went out earlier. So if we got out of the tower and covered the distance, we could avoid the drones as they don’t seem able to fly." She explained, but it was a hard sell.

“Kendo, not all of us can float or stick to walls.” Jiro pointed out, but Midoriya caught on to what Kendo was proposing.

“But Uraraka can make us all float, and then Yaoyorozu can make rope we can use to tie ourselves to Tokage and me; they can act as the anchor to the wall.” It would be weird, but…it could work, and if they were rendered weightless, it would be much easier for the two anchors to keep them from straying out too far and keep a good pace.

"I can help with that, too," Mineta added, which got him some weird looks, which he was mildly offended by. "What? I'm not, but I can keep my grip!"

Midoriya decided to ignore possible innuendoes that could be drawn from that statement. "It would split the workload…not a bad idea. What do you say, Mellissa, is that doable?"

Mellissa had been thinking it over since Kendo first proposed it, but to her joy, she couldn't find any serious fault. And with it being the middle of the night, it'll be hard for anyone to see them. “As long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we can do it!”

Line Break

“How are you guys holding up?” Tokage called back to them. The girl was wearing a harness around her torso, her legs being carried by Iida. What a gentleman.

“We’re doing fine…ish.” Jiro called back, as she did her best not to look down. She and the rest held onto the ropes that Yaomomo had made for them. One of three that led to either Tokage, Midoriya, or Mineta as the three ascended up the tower, pulling them along like kids did their balloons.

“Oh man, this is terrifying. How far up are we?” Kaminari whined. The wind up here didn't make it any less scary as they bobbed back and forth, the blonde making sure to tie the rope around his wrist and have a death grip on it.

"If I recall this right, we should be approaching the 147th floor.” Todoroki hardly seemed affected by anything.

“Dude, I was being sarcastic.” Kaminari sighed, which confused Todoroki. Why would you ask a question when you didn't want a response?

"There is no reason to panic; we're all as weightless as balloons and have no risk of falling to our untimely demise." Iida nodded, being similarly calm despite holding a woman's legs to his chest in a way he hoped didn't leak to the press. The Iida name would never live down the scandal, nor would his brother let him live it down, as he'll find this hilarious.

“I hope you’re doing all right, Uraraka.” Kyūfune focused on why they could even try this: she, too, could stick to walls, but not nearly as well as Midoriya, who moved up it with ease.

“I’m a little queasy, but this is nothing for me," Uraraka replied, as she had only used her quirk n Tokage to give her extra speed. At the same time, Mineta and Midoriya went without zero-gravity, but she was also exempt. She thus couldn't join the others as human balloons. “It is a little weird riding a harness like this.” So, she was strapped to Midoriya’s back like a camping bag.

“Sorry about that, Uraraka, but we can’t have you getting sick by using your quick on yourself.” Kendo offered an apology to her, as it would be a stretch to say they weighed a ton, even with the large fox woman, well within Uraraka's limit. But the girl couldn't use her quirk on herself all that well, and if she lost control because of it while they were up this high…

"I've carried a half-ton rock strapped to my back during training; this is nothing for me.” Midoriya's comment led to Tokage sniffing a laugh as Uraraka was sure he was calling her light. Still, it also came off as insulting when comparing her to a half-ton rock.

"I wish I was the one who got a hot babe on my back," Mineta grumbled as he pulled another ball off his head and stuck it to the wall, using it to pull himself up.

“What was that?” Jiro asked him.

“Nothing!” Jiro eyed him, but lucky for him, they were in a hurry, so his perverted nature could take the back seat, but if he tried something, he'd take a fast way down.

“Mellissa, from where we are, is it a straight shot to the security room at the top?” Todoroki asked, the American being sandwiched between him and Kendo so they could catch her if she lost her grip.

Mellissa looked up and saw a familiar structure coming up. "Not from this position. Around the 160th floor, we hit the wind power generator area. It's an open-air spot that covers most of the floor space up until the 190th floor.”

“Okay, but couldn’t we change to make a straight shoot?” Kaminari asked as that seemed like the best play here.

Mellissa disagreed. "There's bound to be more drones near the security room, so it's best we take this route. Uraraka can keep us weightless, and we can cover most of the way without a fight. We'll need her help to get to the emergency exit that'll put us just four floors below the security room.”

“Any cameras?” Iida asked.

“A few, but not as much as inside.” Mellissa's response lowered their worries a little. Truthfully, if they did all this and still got attacked, it would feel like they took the risk for nothing.

"It's a safe bet then," Midoriya recalled as he could make out that they would get something new soon enough.

Line Break

“Can you find them?” The villain asked the man operating the system, it has been a while since they last saw those kids, and it didn't just mean they up and vanished.

"I've scanned every floor from their last known one, and the drones are on full alert. We're not seeing them." The white-haired villain replied, to which his pink-haired comrade snorted in disbelief.

“What, they went down or something?” He asked, as that was insane. Those brats had climbed over 130 floors trying to retake the system. Even if they had the professor's daughter with them, they could not get into the system from any other terminal but this one. Or was it something else?

“Those drones aren’t seeing anything either, and communication with them hasn’t been disturbed since.” The man on the console replied as he had been especially careful now that they knew one of them had some sort of creation or pocket dimension quirk with tools that could affect the drones. Still, since that last fight, a single unit had so much as twitched or had its connection fizzle.

“Dammit, they couldn’t have just vanished.” The pink-haired man grunted, but without results from their end, he had to contact the boss and let him know. Pulling out his phone, he nodded towards the man manning the security, who quickly shut off the communications jammer so he could make the quick call. "Boss, we have no idea where they went, but we're sure they're still coming up this way."

Wolfram, on the other end, didn't seem worried; if anything, it was the opposite. “Well, these kids are a crafty bunch. Let’s reward them for their hard work with a real challenge. I’m sending the signal.” The boss hung up without another word. The communication was jamming going back online fast enough that most assumed any signal was a fluke or their device getting confused.

But they had other concerns. They had all seen the monster they had been given for free, with free reign to use it as they deemed fit. Honestly, he hadn't thought they'd need it, hell, that they'd want to use it as it would make things loud, but these kids were proving too stubborn to go down through more subtle means.

"Didn't think we'd need that monster." Oh well, it wasn't like he had skin in the game. It'll be a pretty gory mess come morning when that…thing is finished with them.

The white-haired man shook his head, looking towards the path where the professor and his assistant had been taken. “I almost feel bad for them…almost.”

Line Break

“Release.” Uraraka brought her hands together, returning gravity to the group now that they had something solid under their feet. Tokage got her legs back while Mineta removed his harness; the rope had already been dropped.

“It’s freezing up here.” Jiro rubbed her arms, the sea breeze feeling like she was standing inside one of those walk-in freezers while the cylindrical hum of the dozens of fan blades filled the air. The group had reached the spot where they saw that it wasn't just a single fan or wind turbine but a lattice of fans, all fixed between steel support beams connected to the central tower and the 3 side towers built at angles along the edges.  

"I feel fine," Todoroki noted, to which Jiro rolled her eyes.

“Of course you do.” She muttered.

Yaoyorozu smiled, trying to find some humor in the situation. “It’s not like we planned to spend significant time outside, and certainly not at this height.”

Kaminari followed her lead, looking out over the island and the ocean around it. As the place was the source of artificial light for hundreds of kilometres, they had a great view of the man-made wonder and also the natural show that was the heavens and their seemingly endless stars. "The view isn't half bad, at least. Maybe we can return here with the rest and get some great shots."

Iida looked around but didn't see what he would expect from their target. “Mellissa, could you kindly point out the emergency hatch?”

“It’s up there.” She pointed up, and the group followed her finger. Through the darkness, at the bottom of the tower's peak above, they could make out the hazard markings.

"When you said that you needed my quirk, I didn't think it'd be that far," Uraraka noted, as that…was really high up.

"We can't take the same route as last time. Those wind turbines would blow us off course. Tokage, Midoriya, could you take Mellissa and try to make it?” Kendo asked, as with those fans turning, even at their slow pace, there was sure to be suction that'd push and pull on them, much more than before.

Midoriya shook his head. "It wouldn't make sense for both of us to take her; Tokage would be faster for the-!"

He felt it in an instant. He had been stretching his bubble of awareness since they first started this scheme and hadn't stopped despite no signs of them being spotted. Up until now, it had been quiet, other than the twitch that came and went from when he felt a drone in the building pass close to them.

But this? This was like a blast of ice had hit his spine, his back stiffening, his cat ears going alert as he felt something…something big and dangerous.

To most of the rest, they hardly saw him move, but some of them did; Iida, used to moving at high speeds, saw Midoriya twist around on his heel, a wild look to him as his hair seemed to shift, coming up similar to what he had seen from his performance against Kendo. ‘What?’

‘Oh no!’ Kendo saw it as well, along with Todoroki. Still, both weren't fast enough to stop him as he pulled out a seed and thrust his arm forward, wood rapidly forming, creating a giant paw that was aimed at where Kaminari and Uraraka stood. “Mido-!” Kendo called on One for All, raising it to 20% to stop him. She didn't know why, but she wouldn't let him-

The next moment, Midoriya's attack struck both and sent them flying, just as his wooden arm was pulverised by something that came out of nowhere. It moved so fast that they didn't even see it as it slammed into the central pillar like a missile strike.

“What the hell?” Kaminari yelled, coughing up dust from getting smacked like a tennis ball.

“Kaminari, Uraraka, are you okay?” Midoriya called them out, and Iida helped them both up.

“What the heck was that?” Mellissa asked, with Mineta yelping as he fell on his butt.

"What is the right question to ask? Look!" Shakingly, he pointed towards the impact crater, the dust clearing up so they could see the source of it. The creature was massive, almost as big as All Might, if not bigger. It was not covered in muscle, as it had cancerous growths. Two large wings sprouted from its back, rapidly healing, while its clawed hands and feet looked like a mix of an insect and animal.

But what set it apart and made it terrifyingly familiar to the students was its pitch-back skin and exposed brain. “A Nomu? Here?” Kendo asked, recalling the USJ and Hosu. The only way that it could have gotten here was if All for One was involved.

Midoriya was already biting into his thumbs, drawing blood, when the Nomu did something else unexpected. "At last...targets."

Line Break

And I'm back with another chapter! The first in the last couple of months where I didn't need to worry about the commission's upload as well, which meant more time to focus on this. Though I am also working on that anniversary chapter for Emerald Furnace as its first chapter(it's only getting 2) is proving much longer than I thought as it turns out, trying to organically implement all the changes that would occur in a timeline where Izuku never even tried to get into U.A and adding time to that really screws with the world.

When it came to this, I admit that I used a prior story as a base, but with plenty of changes to the formula, including a little something-something that I planned for later. I also take responsibility for this coming out late. Still, I saw I was close to the regular word limit, and after all the stuff in previous chapters, I just had to add more to get it back into form.